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5A OPINIONS/ C(wrlcite ^o«t Thursday, January 18, 2007 There’s no surge protection In Iraq for U.S. troops The administration’s latest decision to add at least 21,000 troops to the fighting in Iraq is the wrong step because it extends the original foUy of waging a mihtary conflict in Iraq in a fiToitless search to find ‘Victory” in the quagmire that the invasion has cre ated. C It is strongly rejected by many citizens V ^ i voted to stop the war and by U. S. military commanders because it has been tried twice and is largely viewed as the force that has increased U. S. casualties I in Iraq. The most crucial aspects of the surge is that it puts more American troops in jeop ardy of their lives in an ultimately unwinnable war. America lost what turned into a guerilla war in Korea in 1954; it lost a guerilla war in Vietnam in 1974 and it has lost this guerilla war as weU. What kept these operations alive - and grew the casualty rate and the expenditure of pre cious funds, is the fiction of American military suprema cy in the pursuit of equally fictitious theories. Remember the “domino theory” that is America lost in Southeast Asia, all of Asia would fall to Communism? The only question is when will the various theoretical fallacies (if we don’t fight them there, we will have to fight them in the streets of America) be recognized as bankrupt and the war be drawn officially to a close by American officials recognizing that they cannot win it. In real terms, the out-going commander of the Iraq War, General Abizaid has already expressed his doubts that additional troops could change the reality on the groimd faced by American troops and his view was backed up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as by the Iraq Commission Report. George Bush uses the troops fighting in Iraq in the most political of ways: on one hand, he praises the gen erals ^d thieir troops at eveiy opportunity for doing a thankless job; then, he discards the advice of the gener als when it is convenient and when they have advised him that a troop surge will not bring “victory” in his terms. Okay, let’s say that Baghdad is “stabilized” and that tlie new strategy of “clear and hold” is adopted by the military. Then what? How long will American troops be able to hold their positions and will they become sit ting ducks as they hold these positions for more attacks and more casualties as a result? So, it appears that Bush is ready to sacrifice the troops - and I use that word purposefully - in the service of a questionable gamble that the infusion of more troops might help to “stabilize” at least Baghdad. This is a recipe for the con tinuance for failure. The bottom line here is that U.S. troops — the troops of any country - are the instruments of a poHcy, but Bush has used them to fi'ont his pohcy by inferring that if you don’t support the pohcy, you don’t support the troops. This is flawed logic that would not fly in any banana repubhc. So why does it fly in the most affluent, the most intellectually perspicacious, the most militari ly- oriented nation in the world? The answer is that Americans do not want to face up to the fact that this war can’t be won and as such, they permit Bush to hide behind the vague goals of “victory” extending a destructive enterprise that should have been closed down long ago. The “new” to surge 21,000 more troops is accompanied by a proposal to put $5 bil lion more into a rat hole called the Iraq War, an amount that compares to that in the annual U.S. budget for the Community Block Grant program that funds many worthwhile projects in American cities; the Bush administration has cut back in the appropriations each year. So, Democrats have to revise their vow not to cut off funding for the military campaign in Iraq, because they are not the ones to put the troops in jeopardy - the pres ident did that. And don’t have the temerity to cut off funding, at min imum they should re-evaluate their conduct of this war and begin to withdraw the troops. This is the strategy that closed down other wars and may well have to be used in this case, too. RON WALTERS is professor of government and poli tics at fhe University of Maryland College Park. Connect with ®l)e ^oiSt Send letters and editorials to The Charlotte Post, P.O. Box 30144 Charlotte, NC 28230 or e-mail editorial ©thecharlot- tepost.com. We edit for grammar, clarity and space. Include your name and daytime phone number. Editorials should be limited to 500 words and submitted by e-mail only. Correspondence and photos will not be returned by mail unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Can N.C. Democrats learn from Virginia’s senator? A few days ago, when the Democrats took charge of the Congress, some of us forgot that control of the U.S. Senate would not have shifted except that an unusual Democrat won an election in a nearby state. New Senator James Webb is anything but a tjrpical Democrat. He was a long time Republican and even served as President Reagan’s ,• ****^' secretary of the Navy. He defends the Vietnam War in which he served as a decorat ed Marine Corps officer. He is ■’ , “pro-gun.” He takes a hard |\ line on illegal immigration. Democrats may not like his positions on the issues, but they surely hked his come- from-behind victory over incumbent Republican Senator George Allen. Webb’s victory raises interesting ques tions for North Carolinians. First, assume North Carolina Democrats could find a ‘Webb-like” candidate who could beat Elizabeth Dole in 2008. Then ask, could a former Republican war hero with hard line conservative views on impor tant issues win the Democratic primary? It is a tough question. Talk to some Democrats and they will tell you they will do anything to win. Other Democrats would rather lose than have their candidate com promise on key issues. Another question about Webb is whether or not he is too confrontational and hard- headed to be an effective team player. Shortly after his election, he had an unfihendly exchange with President Bush. Some people wonder if he has the diplomat ic attitude legislators need to succeed. Webb is a successful writer. One of his books may give us clues about who Jim Webb really is, about the origins of this con frontational nature, and how he was able to appeal to enough rural and conservative voters in Virginia. Webb’s book, “Bora. Fighting,” is a history of the Scotch-Irish peoples. He follows them from the time of the Roman occupation of Britain until today’s America. Their history, he argues, made them tenacious fighters whenever it came to defending or asserting their rights. ' Webb describes the struggles of the Scots with the English over the centuries. He details the immigration to Northern Ireland in the 17th century and the fighting against both Irish and English to secure their fami lies. Then these “Ulster Scots” began migrating to the colonies, where they fought Indians on the frontier and stood up to the Enghsh colonists who ran the colonial gov ernments. When the American Revolution broke out, the Scotch- Irish provided more than 40 percent of the troops that fought the British. These fighting traits made the Scotch- Irish the backbone of American fighting forces, in the Revolution, Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, where Webb himself fought bravely. Webb believes that the fighting qualities of the Scotch-Irish are basically positive values in themselves, and he proudly claims to be a part of that culture. A number of commentators have severely criticized Webb’s version of history. Among the most severe of them is Chapel Hill- based Celtic scholar Michael Newton, who condemns Webb for numerous factual errors and questionable methodology. “Unfortunately,” writes Newton, “Webb makes the error of taking history personal ly, and trying to make the personal histori cal. He too often ‘proves’ his hypotheses by repeating anecdotes about his family or peo ple he has met on his travels. While these may be amusing sketches, they are not the data of the historical method.” However you feel about Webb’s book (and I confess that I enjoyed it), Newton’s point about the book making the “personal histor ical” is just the reason that it can help us understand who Webb is or, at least, who he thinks he is. In addition, I think, Webb describes the people whose votes he won in the recent election-the “little people” who have been oppressed by big government, big business, and both pohtical parties. These are people who mostly voted Republican in recent elec tions. They are people who, hke the Scotch- Irish that Webb describes, are ready to choose leaders who will speak for them and fight for them. And they showed last fall that they would vote for candidates hke Jim Webb, even if the candidates were Democrats, which is why North Carolina Democrats should be thinking about Webb as they plan for 2008. D.G. MART/N is hosf of UNC-A/'s North Carolina Bookwafch, which airs Sundays at 5 p.m. Check his blog and view prior programs Congress should adjust the minimum wage for inflation Back in November, the AfHcan-American community, which mobilized and turned out in record numbers to vote, played a major role in achieving the transformation that has taken place on Capitol Hill. With the 110th Congress in full swing and its first female House Speaker in U.S. history in command and I blacks in prominent leadership I posts, it’s time for lawmakers to I make good on their election-year I rhetoric. So far so good. I Under the tutelage of Speaker I of the House Nancy Pelosi, D- I Calif, the U.S. House recently passed by an impressive 315- 116 margin legislation raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over the next two years . I must commend Speaker Pelosi and her cohorts for rallying the ranks to follow through on their election-year promises. I also must applaud them for producing a clean bill froe of conces sions to the business community in the form of tax breaks. As I said at the National Urban League’s annual conference in Atlanta, increasing the minimum wage is a small but necessary step toward narrowing the economic divide between minorities and Whites in the United States. The current federal wage of $5.15 an hour has been in place since 1997. When adjusted for inflation, it is at its lowest level since 1955. Under the bill that won House approval, Americans now working full time at minimum wage can expect to see their earn ings rise nearly 47 percent to $15,070 a year, nearly $5,500 above the poverty hne for indi viduals. Overall, 13 million workers (10 percent of the U.S. workforce) are expected to benefit from the wage hike, 16 percent of them African Americans. More than half of states already require employers to pay workers an hourly wage above the federal minimum level. And according to a recent Associated Press-AOL News poll, 80 percent of Americans surveyed support a hike. Our federal lawmakers need to bring our nation’s lowest-wage earners out of the 1950s and into the 21st Century. These workers can barely support themselves let alone their chil dren. Ibn years of inaction by Congress has thrown more and more Americans off the road to economic prosperity and into the trenches of poverty. If we fail to acknowledge their hard , work, we risk exhausting their hopes of achiev ing the American dream. For far too long, our federal lawmakers have ignored the plight of our nation’s lowest-paid employees. In recent years, they’ve spent more time cutting breaks to the bosses of the work ing poor than the working poor. MARC H. MORIAL is president and CEO of the National Urban League. New breed of American leaders for a new year “For these children, our children, and for all of America’s chil- I dren, the I House will I come to order!” ! With these I words Rep. i Nancy Pelosi, surrounded by ’ her six grand children, made history the first week of January as she accepted her election as the first female speaker of the House in American history. Women across the country cheered as she was handed the speaker’s gavel, making her the second person in line for the presidency after Vice President Cheney and the most powerful woman ever in American poHtics. As Speaker Pelosi said, “It’s an historic moment for the Congress. It’s an historic moment for the women of America. It is a moment for which we have waited over 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren’t just waiting; women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are creat ed equal. For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our grand daughters now, the sky is the limit.” But Nancy Pelosi’s victory was just one of the elections making political history. It was also a historic election season for black candidates, and from new Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to mem bers of Congress from across the country, black political leaders are ready to make a difference in 2007. Patrick, a former civil rights lawyer and assistant attorney general for civil rights during the Clinton administration, became only the second black elected gov ernor in the U.S. since Reconstruction. The first, for mer Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, was one of the guests present as Patrick was sworn into office earher this month using a Bible that had been given to President John Quincy Adams by a group of Africans he helped free fi'om the slave ship Amistad. Black children and all America’s children need elected leaders committed to enacting urgently-needed health coverage for all—not A final salute to Godfather of Soul In 1988,1 was the straight- laced newsman on that hilar ious, WPEG-FM morning radio show that featured the very popular and brilliant Skip Murphy and his cast of | Crazies with the zany, multi-talented Chaz who never heard a voice he could n’t duplicate... except that of the late-James Brown, “Godfather of Soul.” (That duo eventually moved on to Dallas where Murphy replaced the departing “Fly Jock” Tbm Jo3mer. Joyner terminated his daily flights from Dallas after his morning show to Chicago for after noon air and ultimately to estabhsh the nationally-syn dicated “Tbm Joyner Morning Show”.) In a meeting after one of our shows. Skip, Chaz and I laughingly recounted the dif ficulty in understanding the lyrics of one of James’ popu lar hits. And from that grew the very, popular “James Brown Word-of-the-Day,” wherein The Godfather (actu ally Skip) would call into the studio “live” to chat with Ernest T. Bass (Chaz) and “that news boy who thank he know evathang,” (That was me.) James would provide us with a word from his broad vocabulary and taken from some particular unusual, unfortunate, funny or other wise interesting circum stance or moment in his rou tine daily life. I would astute ly provide the Webster’s Dictionary definition. And, of course, James would declare in bold indignation that 1, Skip, Ernest T., Webster nor anybody else had a clue of the meaning. And he would then go on to use it in a sentence, which, of course, was the punch line. I join the millions of Godfather fans who mourn his untimely death. And in so doing, I submit a couple of vocabulary offerings that could be taken from fictional depictions of the Godfather’s reaction to debate surround ing the delay of his burial and financial settlement of his estate. Godfather’s word: “recipe” Webster's definition; state ment of ingredients for a mix ture Godfather’s usage: “Ya’ll need to burr me now so I can re-ci-pe (rest in peace)!” Godfather’s word: “burial” Webster’s definition: put into a grave; to hide Godfather’s usage: “I used to be rich. Bu-ri-al (But real money) money gone now!” KEN KOONTZ is founder of All-Stars Communications in Charlotte. just some—children in 2007. They need leaders who wiU commit to ending child pover ty in America by 2015, half by 2010, and to make concrete down payments each year in targeted investments. I hope all of our elected leaders are ready to roll up their sleeves and work together to put America’s house in order for our chil dren. And I hope every voter—you—is ready to hold them accountable for results that back up rhetoric. MARIAN WRIGHT EDEL- MAN is president and founder of fhe Children’s Defense Fund. PHOTO/CALVIN FERGUSON
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Jan. 18, 2007, edition 1
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